STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
CELIA LAWREN
We didn’t care that missiles in Cuba were aimed at our homes. We were
twelve-year-old girls running barefoot through wet summer grass in the dark,
headed for a slumber party in the bomb shelter.
Cinder block cavern carved into basement corner, walls lit up in buttercup yellow―
a curious Cold War feng shui conceived for a home economics project by my sister,
It was packed with Free World amenities:
central air and heat, running water and a full-service bathroom.
Cans of pineapple, peas and tuna gleamed under fluorescent lights
next to gauze bandages, water jugs, stacks of dusty army blankets.
Perched atop bunk beds, we painted our toes Red Hot Red
curled each other’s hair around pink sponge rollers,
licking catsup and potato chip salt from our fingers.
We giggled nervously as I lit one of Mama’s menthol cigarettes stolen from the pantry.
Sucking ferociously on each stick, we mimicked women in magazines and movies.
It wasn’t until daylight that we noticed
the singed sheets and hastily rubbed catsup into the burns.
When the girls left, Mama told me she smelled smoke the night before.
I remembered the floor vents above us – one next to her La-Z-Boy.
I dreaded what was coming---could see Mama’s jaw tense,
feel the air brush my skin before the smack sounded, before the capillaries
exploded in my cheek. That thin bony hand holding
more terror than any warhead from Cuba. But she didn’t hit me.
Gathering sheets to the laundry room, we stood
side by side, scrubbing red stains in silence.
Celia Lawren is the author of the poetry chapbook, Among Dead Things, a chronicle of tragedy and resilience. She is the winner of the 2021 Poetry Prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild. Her poems have been published in Caesura, Tule Review, She Speaks: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia, 2021–22, and Colossus: Freedom: An Anthology of Voices Across the Carceral Wasteland 2022. Lawren resides in Knoxville, Tennessee, after living many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
